


Wished for This

by RedGold



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Flynn's mindset when he takes the Lifeboat to 2012, References to Depression, Suicidal Thoughts, Timeless Finale Movie Fix-It, but this time things end differently
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 11:18:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20226988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedGold/pseuds/RedGold
Summary: Flynn has taken the Lifeboat to 2012 in order to kill Jess, even if that means losing his own life. But someone is there to greet him who reminds him that all the dark voices in his head, they are wrong. Sometimes things work out. You just have to have a little faith.





	Wished for This

**Wished For This**

A voice told him he was acting rashly, stupidly, and, quite frankly, making a big mistake. But the louder voice, the one that took root the day his family had been murdered because he couldn’t save them… it spoke the truth. He was _never_ going to save them. He was destined to die… a hero? Well, he can’t change fate.

Lord knows he’s tried.

He just needs to do this one good thing. Save Rufus, and in doing so, keep Lucy safe, keep Jiya safe, and, well, Lucy loved Wyatt, so she’ll have a chance at a happy life. It was the least he could do for taking her sister away from her. Just another one of his many mistakes…

_“What do you think you’re doing?”_ a voice that sounded suspiciously like his mother screamed, trying to be heard over the black smoke enshrouding his thoughts. _“We don’t give up! Even when we are in pain! Even when there is sadness! We don’t give up! We keep living our lives! We keep going!”_

There had always been sadness in his mother’s eyes, but there had been happiness too. She loved Asher, she loved Garcia, and she always made sure he knew. Yes, she missed Gabriel, blamed herself for his death, but Garcia was just as much her son as he had been. She would move heaven and earth for either child if she could. Steal a time machine even…

Garcia might be a Flynn, but he was a Thompkins through and through. 

It was too late now, the Lifeboat had jumped forward to 2012. It was too late to save his family. It was too late to fix all his mistakes. It was… too late for him.

The hatch cycled open and Flynn hopped out, taking a surveillance of the area. He picked a hilly spot near where Jess was supposed to die—will die—so that the machine wouldn’t be noticed. It was dark already, being February and all, and his family would be sitting down to dinner soon. His girls… his beautiful, innocent girls…

How he wished he could have saved them.

His mother’s voice tried to tell him he still could, still had a chance, but he was reminded of how he failed… again… and again… and again. 

_“Don’t give up hope,”_ she whispered and it snuck through. But it wouldn’t be enough to fight the dark thoughts.

He snaps to alertness as he walks over a hill, the road where Jess dies only a few minutes away. He can hear the occasional car pass by, the streetlights bleeding into the horizon. But it’s the woman standing at the bottom of the hill, looking up at him, that has his attention. 

Two thoughts cross his mind. The first being that this is the Rittenhouse agent assigned to protect Jess. The second was the possibility that he had landed at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and someone else walking home stumbled across him. His hand inched towards his weapon, just in case.

“Garcia Flynn,” the woman calls his name, less of a question, more of a statement of fact. He pulls his gun and she throws her hands wide. “I’m unarmed. I only came to talk to you.”

He watches her carefully as he slowly approaches, her features becoming more distinct as he closes the gap. There is something familiar about her but he can’t place it. He hasn’t met her, he’s sure of that, but he could have seen a photograph, or walked past her in a hallway.

She looks to be in her late 20s, perhaps early 30s, and she’s tall, well above average, though still shorter than him. Her long, light brown hair is pulled back into a military style braid. In fact, her whole stance speaks of someone who has gone through training. Of someone who is ready to fight if it came to that.

“Who are you?” he askes roughly, still keeping an eye out for an ambush.

“Someone who is trying to save your life,” she answers succinctly. 

It’s the clothes, they aren’t quite right. They don’t fit for 2012, or hell, any year he had lived through. “You’re from the future?”

“Yes.” Was there sadness in her voice?

He lowers his gun, but only slightly, still not sure what is bothering him. “So, Jessica is too heavily guarded?” 

“Opposite, actually.” She lets out a bit of a sardonic laugh. “She’ll put up a fight, but you kill her pretty easily.” 

“Then what’s the problem?” His eyes lock onto hers and something is right there, obvious, but impossible.

“More like a there are a _lot_ of problems,” her words take on an edge. “Rufus is saved but it’s pointless. The team think they defeat Rittenhouse, but they only stop Emma. They all go on to live happy little lives while Rittenhouse plots and waits and… and they win. The future is a nightmare.”

Flynn swallows hard. All his years of training, plus something in his peripheral, tell him that she speaks the truth. In the end… he’s failed… again.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she continues, a determined look in her eye. “You’re going to stay here and die. You’re going to give up hope.” She spits out the words as if she’s personally offended.

“What hope is there to give up?” he verbally lashes out as a war wages inside of him, screaming that he’s wrong and other side only taking that as proof they are right. “I am never going to save my family, no matter how many more times I try.”

“So you’re just going to let yourself die?” she lashes back, nearly yelling, not being intimidated by him. “Join your girls in oblivion like you almost did in São Paulo?”

That gives him pause. “How did you…”

“It’s a common side effect of PTSD and survivor’s guilt,” she answers clinically the question he wasn’t asking. “And we don’t have time to go into the details of chronic depression. In a few minutes your brain is going to start to feel like nails are being driven into it. You need to go back to 1848, rescue the team because they got themselves captured, and then return to 2018.”

His head is already starting to spin but he doesn’t think it has anything to do with the affects of traveling on one’s own timeline. “What about Jessica? What about Rufus?”

“I’ll take care of Rufus,” she says as if it’s obvious. “The point right now is to save you _both_.”

The woman is telling him all these things that will happen. She knows what the dark voices are saying in his head, the ones he doesn’t want to listen to but are too loud to ignore. She’s trying to save his life, and Rufus… and Jessica. 

“How do I know you’re not Rittenhouse?” he asks and for some reason the question sits oddly on his tongue. “You could be trying to save Jessica. Stop the team from taking out Emma.”

There’s a little crinkle in her brow and a softness in her eyes. “You just have to have a little faith.”

That’s it, that’s what kicks the door open and brings his suspicions into the light. Yes, he has met this woman who was once a five-year-old little girl. 

“… Iris?” the word comes out slow and cautiously, as he both fears and welcomes the truth.

Something in the woman breaks, her composure lost and there, there it is again, the incredible softness of Lorena’s eyes. Iris’ words tremble, “You recognize me?”

“Of course I do, _mala cvijeta_.” He envelopes Iris, squeezing his daughter tightly in a hug that threatens to break him. It’s her… it’s really her…

Tears fill his eyes and he won’t let go. If this is some kind of time travel fever dream then he welcomes it because his daughter his alive. She is alive and in his arms, smelling of charcoal and pine trees, all grown up…

“Wait.” Flynn pulls back just enough to look at her, seeing her eyes just as wet as his own. “How… how can this be? You’re… dead. You can’t grow up to travel back in time.”

“You’re right,” she’s less cautious and clinical with him now, a mask having fallen away. Had she really thought he wouldn’t recognize her? “If I were dead, I can’t grow up. But I’m here.”

He cups her face in his hands, her face shaped so much like his mother’s, but with the mico-expressions of Lorena. He whispers, afraid the truth will make her disappear, “How is this possible?”

“What…” her breathing stutters. “What do you remember, about that night?” 

“I… I couldn’t get to you, or your mother.” The pain rips through him anew, as blunt as it is sharp. “But I could see you both, so still and lifeless, covered in blood.” 

There was no way Iris would remain asleep with all the gunfire and shouting going on. Lorena also would have put up a fight if she was able to, but the blood had been dark, gathered around her middle. An ambulance had come when the neighbors called the police, reporting gunshots. The police report that Stiv got for him later said they were already dead by then. It was a coroner who removed them, not the EMT’s.

But… if they had been alive… drugged perhaps… a report falsified by willing cops… and he just left them there…

“I did die.” Iris seems to be able to read his thoughts. “I don’t know in how many timelines before, but I was dead. Then things… changed. Time… isn’t static. The others think it is, that we just keep repeating the same thing over and over again, but that’s not true. Little changes, big changes, all of it to finally get things right.” There are tears in her eyes. “And that’s what I’m trying to do right now. You die here, _tata_. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Flynn almost hears nothing she says, her voice saying _tata_ pulling his heart into his throat and he might just break down and cry again.

But he’s a trained soldier and spy, he barely manages to keep on track. He still hasn’t let go of her, still afraid she’ll disappear. He risks touching her cheek. “You came here to stop me, to save me.”

“And you have no idea how long and hard I fought to do so,” she whispers back painfully. “The others… this is a big change. No one is sure how it’s going to play out. Everyone is afraid.”

She is afraid, she doesn’t bother to hide it. Is she making the right choice, or the selfish one? Can’t it be both? He wraps his arms around her again and rubs her back like he did when she was a baby, frightened of every new thing. He couldn’t protect her as a child, but maybe he could comfort her as an adult. 

An adult… that will hit him eventually. Right now he basks in the thought of her being alive, somehow, some way…

“Is your mother with you?” he isn’t even sure how he manages the words, his heart still in his throat where he left it.

She tenses and he has his answer, something inside him shattering when he thought it already as broken as it could be. He holds her tighter, letting her know that whatever happened, she was his daughter and he loved her… and he should be the one to apologize.

“None of this is your fault,” Iris says as she pulls back, wiping at her eyes. “Mom was very clear on that point. Everything that’s happened, it’s because Rittenhouse… because they tried to play god.”

That sounded like Lorena, so much so he could hear her voice whispering the words to him, trying to break through the darkness… through his guilt. 

Iris nearly doubles over in pain, grabbing at her head. Panic rises inside of him. He just got his daughter back, he can’t watch her die, not again…

“So that’s what that feels like,” she tries to make light as she brushes off the event.

“What’s wrong?” He knows it’s the same thing that happened to Future Lucy, but he can’t help himself. He runs his hands over her face and neck, checking for wounds or fever… any sign of injury or illness. Once a father… always a father it seems. 

“Nothing, yet.” She gently bats him away just as his hand brushes a scar on her neck. “I’ve been here a little longer than you, the fact that I’m on my own timeline is catching up to me. We still have a few minutes, but we should get going. Get in the Lifeboat and go back to 1848, rescue the team.”

She starts to move, making him turn towards the Lifeboat because he doesn’t want to let go of her. He doesn’t want to leave her, not again. Yes, he has so many questions about what happened that night, but he just wants to bask in the reality that his little girl is alive… grown up… become a fighter…

“I didn’t want this for you,” he says before he could stop himself.

“What?” It’s a question, plain and simple.

“I know someone who’s been through a war when I see them,” he explains, trying to keep himself from repeating the words _I’m so sorry_ over and over again. “Your mother and I didn’t want that for you. We wanted you to not have to carry the same scars we did.”

“I know,” her words are genuine and it’s a balm to help the pain be a little less. “I made my own choices. And I chose to fight. I chose to never give up hope.”

Guilt sears through him, remembering the whole reason he was there in the first place. He gave up… on his family… on himself… on hope…

Iris wraps him in another hug and he breathes her in again. His beautiful daughter who is alive… and saving him…

“I can’t forgive you,” she tells him, “because there is nothing for me to forgive. Remember that, okay, _tata_?”

“I’ll remember.” His voice is rough and his eyes bleary, hoping he can keep his promise.

“Now go, before we do run out of time,” she urges him towards the Lifeboat. “Leave Rufus to me.”

He has no words, and no desire to part from her, but he knows he must, to stay here would mean the death of them both. One last tight hug and a kiss placed on the top of her head and he finally lets himself let go. This won’t be the last time he sees her, he _knows_ it.

Walking to the Lifeboat, he constantly looks back, worried she will disappear on him. Iris stands, watching, making sure he’s going to get back to his own time safely. After he’s crawled up into the machine, he turns and he can see her standing at the crest of the hill. She smiles at him, then doubles over in pain again.

It’s everything he can do to keep himself from jumping out and running towards her. She recovers and shakes it off, letting him know she’s okay. With one last gesture, she turns and runs across to pass over the next hill. A moment later, there is a flash of light and the distinctive sound of a time machine. She’s gone, returned to the future, where hopefully she is safe.

There is nothing stopping him from going after Jessica. He still has time to get to her before it’s too late. 

He hits the control to close the hatch and watches as 2012 disappears. He trusts his daughter… he has… faith.

He also has a gun and a better sense of awareness than the so-called Delta Force Master Sergeant who let some yokels get the drop on him. It wasn’t hard to locate the team. Murrieta was eager to help, and take any gold they might find along the way. 

“Where the hell were you?” Wyatt tried to get into his face. 

Normally it would piss Flynn off and he’d snap back, put the man in his place. But there was a sense of peace in Flynn that was new, and shiny, and oh god, his daughter was alive, out there, somewhere. And she saved him…

“Well?” Wyatt demanded his attention.

Flynn smiled. “I guess you could say I was on a spiritual journey to rediscover my faith.”

The man thought he was being flippant, maybe he was just a touch, but it was the truth. He didn’t realize how much he had given up by giving up on himself.

“Flynn?” Lucy pulled him aside before they left for the Lifeboat. The letter he wrote in her hand. He hadn’t had a chance to get it back. “You took the Lifeboat to 2012, to stop Jessica.”

“Yes.” He could hardly deny the truth.

“Did… did you?” she asks as if she is both afraid of the answer, and confused as to why she is.

“No,” he answered simply. “I, ah, came to my senses.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, subconsciously holding the letter higher.

“I’m… not a hundred percent sure about that myself.” He has to be honest. Learning Iris is alive changes everything and nothing. He needs to find where the balance lies and for the moment, all he can do is ride out the wave.

“Let’s go!” Wyatt shouts as he mounts his horse, eager to get home. 

It didn’t take long to get to the Lifeboat, Flynn parked nearer to Sutter’s Mill on his return. That’s when Jiya and Wyatt realized what he had done. Or, what he was going to do.

“You had the chance to stop Jessica, and you didn’t?” Wyatt asks him and it grates on Flynn how easily the man could say such things.

It had been a torturous thought process, mired in grief and guilt, for him to come to the decision to go back and kill Jessica. And he barely knew the woman. If someone had said his only chance to save Iris was to kill Lorena, well, he’d definitely try harder to save them both.

Flynn got into Wyatt’s face. “I got to thinking about you saying our _only_ option is kill the woman you professed to love, who you were having enough unprotected sex with to legitimately think you could get her pregnant, and I thought maybe you were being just a _little_ over-reactive.”

That made Wyatt clench his jaw, unable to come up with a reply to the truth. 

“I think,” Lucy cleared her throat, “I think we’ve all been a bit hasty, in our grief.”

That really was the truth of it. But Jiya still asked, “What about Rufus?”

He turns to her and, in a way, he sees Iris. A young woman in a lot of pain, but still fighting the fight. He tells her softly, “Don’t worry, it’s taken care of.”

Jiya shakes her head. “What does that mean?” 

“I’ll… I’ll explain it in a bit,” he promises her. “The sooner we get back to the bunker, the sooner we’ll have Rufus again.”

Her eyes narrow, questioning him. 

“Let’s go,” Lucy says softly, trusting him.

He’s unsure how much Jiya trusts him, but she does trust Lucy completely. Jiya turns and starts to climb into the Lifeboat. Lucy climbs in next, Flynn giving her a helping hand. Wyatt simply glares at Flynn as he gives Wyatt the ‘after you’ gesture. 

In no time at all they are back to 2018… where his daughter is nine years old… out there… somewhere.

“Everything go okay?” Christopher asks as they walk down the ladder.

“Yeah,” Wyatt says with a huff, “no thanks to Flynn.”

“What happened?” the agent asked.

“For one, he disappeared on us,” Wyatt starts to rant. Flynn’s raised a child, he knows that sometimes they have to wear themselves out. “He took the Lifeboat out joyriding.”

Of course this concerns the Homeland agent. “Out where?” 

“To 2012. February 12th, 2012. The day Jess died,” Wyatt says, then corrects, “the day she’s supposed to die.”

“Jessica didn’t die,” Christopher says cautiously. “And she’s still out there. We need to pack up and leave before this place is overrun by Rittenhouse agents.”

“Which wouldn’t have happened if…” Wyatt actually stumbles, “if we take out Jess, in 2012, like it was supposed to happen before Rittenhouse got involved.”

This naws at Flynn. If Jess was meant to die did that mean his family did too? Well, they did die, sort of. The world thought they were dead, _he_ thought they were dead. But little changes, big changes, who is say what is meant to be and what isn’t? What is the truth, what is a lie we’ve been told? A lie that we tell ourselves?

Mason scoffs. “You want to go back and murder your wife? One you were oh so happy to see alive, if the noises coming from your room were any indication.”

“I don’t _want_ to,” Wyatt defends himself. “But we don’t have any other choice. If Jessica doesn’t come here, then she doesn’t kidnap Jiya.”

“I’m sure we can think of another way than killing her,” Mason seems to the voice of reason. Yes, he missed Rufus only second to Jiya, but he was a businessman, used to exploring every angle. He played the long-game, planned every move. That’s what they needed to do here, not react emotionally.

That was something he learned the hard way when he should have known better. At least, that is what the voice is telling him. He screwed up, everything, from the beginning. His daughter had to be brought back from the dead to fix his mistake.

“Back up,” Christopher doesn’t have to shout to command the room. She looks right at Flynn. “Let me get this straight. You took the Lifeboat to 2012, why? To take out Jessica?”

“That…” he cleared his throat and licked his lips. “That was my initial plan.”

Before Christopher could ask her next question, Wyatt butted in. “Why didn’t you stop Jess? You could have saved Rufus.”

“Wyatt,” Flynn says with what little patience he has for the man. “For once in your life would you take a second and just be patient and wait.”

Jiya is the one to ask because he promised her answers. “Wait for what?”

The incoming alarm goes off and there is the distinctive crackle of ions as time is bent unnaturally so. 

“For that,” Flynn says calmly as everyone else panics, thinking maybe Emma has found them.

What appears isn’t the Mothership, it’s not even the Lifeboat. It looks roughly like a time machine, a sphere with rotating rings, but that is where similarities end. Even being a prototype, the Lifeboat at least had something of an order to it, clean lines. This machine was a mishmash of metal panels welded together. Scorching didn’t hide the dents or the patched possible bullet holes. 

His daughter was careening through time _in that!?_

“Flynn,” Lucy says as she stands beside him, looking up at the machine. “What did you do?”

He hadn’t really had time to process the events, not truly, but it was becoming clear to him that, “I don’t think I did anything.” 

Other than die, of course.

The hatch cycled, rolling off to the side, a voice calling out, “We got wounded!”

It’s Iris, now dressed in a button up blouse typical of a 19th century school-marm, hair up in a bun. He can’t take his eyes off of her because if this is happening, if the others are seeing it, then it’s real.

“Rufus!” Jiya shouts and belatedly Flynn notices that Iris is helping to basically push a slightly unresponsive Rufus out of the hatch. 

Everyone rushes forward, Jiya barely getting out of the way to let him, Wyatt, and Mason, grab ahold of Rufus’ dead weight. 

“He’s been shot,” Iris explains as she helps to feed him out. “Couldn’t be helped, but he’s patched up, he’ll be fine.”

“No,” Rufus says, slightly slurred. “The Ewoks were going to _eat_ people. That shit’s scary.”

“He’s also a little drugged up right now,” Iris says with a deadpan that somehow she had learned from him. 

Flynn is helping, but his eyes are on his daughter, on the machine, and everything... 

There are two others with her. A man of Middle Eastern descent, probably early 30s, is helping Iris with Rufus. He’s dressed like he also stepped out of 1888, though Flynn can see a modern shoulder holster with a Remington 1911 sitting snuggly. Another woman, dark skinned, is working the controls of the ship. It's impossible to tell her age from her back. The insides of the machine look just as hodge podged as the outside.

Iris turns her head to look behind her, he’s not sure what she’s checking on, but he sees it. A scar about half an inch-long right under her ear at the base of her skull. He’s seen scars like that before but he doesn’t have time to think about it. 

Rufus is being carry-dragged over to the sofa and laid down, still mumbling about flesh eating care-bears. Iris has done what she said she would, saved Rufus, and it was clear she wasn’t going to stick around, even for a short conversation.

“Iris,” he says her name and he’s not sure if it’s a plea or a wish. The second she leaves, will he ever see her again? At any age, at any time?

He knows she’s alive in this timeline, still a young girl, but she’s here, right now, in front of him. He doesn’t want to let her go, even though rationality tells him she can’t stay, she has to return to her own time. 

But _she’s here…_

Iris looks him in the eye and all he can see is pain and sadness in hers.

“I can’t stop you from looking for me,” she tells him, her voice trembling slightly. “But just remember, be careful what you wish for.”

Iris reaches up and hits a switch, the door starts to close. 

_“Volim te, mala cvijeta,”_ he barely gets the words out, he’s not even sure if he has the right to say them.

For a moment it feels like she’s not going to reply, for better or worse, she simply looks at him sadly. But as the door passes her, Iris leans across and manages to shout out, _“Volim te, tata.”_

It’s everything to keep himself from falling to his knees and just let himself _feel_. Iris is alive, his daughter is alive, he’ll say it again and again and again. And she’s out there… alive… but… 

“That was Iris?” Lucy asks beside him as he stares into the empty space the time machine had sat. “That was your daughter?”

“Yes…” 

He’s gone past the breaking point and can only laugh or risk falling apart.

“Wait, so this means she’s alive?” Lucy says hopefully. “She didn’t die in 2014?”

“Yes…” 

“That’s… great.” She means it, but her confusion is obvious and not completely unwarranted. “But how?”

Flynn can’t answer her because he doesn’t know. All he can say is, “I wished for this.”

But at what cost?


End file.
